Theoretical models of government formation in political science usually assume that the head of state is non-strategic. In this paper, we analyze the power of an agenda setter who chooses the order in which players are recognized to form coalitions in simple games. We characterize those sets of...

This note analyzes the effect of product complementarity in a bilateral oligopoly. We show that offers of traders on the two sides of the market are strategic complements (substitutes) if and only if the two goods are substitutes (complements). The outcome of the bilateral oligopoly game...

When firms can supply several separate markets, collusion can take two forms. Either firms establish production quotas on all the markets, or they share markets. This paper compares production quotas and market sharing agreements in a Cournot duopoly where firms incur a fixed cost for serving...

This paper analyzes the provision of matching services in a model of two-sided search. Agents belong to two populations and are uniformly distributed on [0,1]. Their utility is equal to the index of their mate. In a search equilibrium, as in Mac Namara and Collins (1990), agents form...

We examine the determinants of expenditures on wedding celebrations by rural Indian families. We develop a status signaling model of wedding celebrations where the size of the celebration signals the quality of the new groom’s family and, thus, the enhanced social status of the bride’s...

This paper proposes new concepts of strong and coalition-proof correlated equilibria where agents form coalitions at the interim stage and share information about their recommendations in a credible way. When players deviate at the interim stage, coalition-proof correlated equilibria may fail to...

This paper analyzes the formation of networks when players choose how much to invest in each relationship. We suppose that players have a fixed endowment that they can allocate across links, and in the baseline model, suppose that link strength is an additively separable and convex function of...

This paper analyzes the formation of market sharing agreements among firms in oligopolistic markets and procurement auctions. The set of market sharing agreements defines a collusive network, and the paper provides a complete characterization of stable and efficient collusive networks when firms...

This paper investigates the relation between asymmetries in the distribution of shares in joint ventures and asymmetries between the parent companies. When the joint venture and the parent companies are controlled by separate entities, we provide a simple formula to compute the optimal ownership...